Truck-load of Marijuana Abandoned on California Highway

Truck-load of Marijuana Abandoned on California Highway

An abandoned consignment of marijuana with a street value of $20m (£10.3m) was found in California when a policeman went to check on a lorry.
The vehicle was unlocked and the engine warm, but no-one was in the cab.

The patrolman found plastic-wrapped bundles of the drug in the back of the rental vehicle near Los Angeles after smelling marijuana, AP said.

A recent report estimates that despite intensive eradication plans, $35bn worth of the marijuana a year
is produced in the US, making it the country's top cash crop.

Did you catch that?
The country's top cash crop.
Any wonder why they keep it illeagal?
If the average smoker could grow their own instead of having a vegetable garden, then the guys controling the flow would be cut out of the loop of
'the country's top cash crop'.

Help me deny my ignorance, whats a lorry?
I assume it is a truck of some sorts, but I have never heard the term lorry.

* In 1916, the U.S. Government predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees need to be cut down.
Government studies report that 1 acre of hemp equals 4.1 acres of trees. Plans were in the works to implement such programs; Department of Agriculture

* Quality paints and varnishes were made from hemp seed oil until 1937. 58,000 tons of hemp seeds were used in America for paint products in 1935;
Sherman Williams Paint Co. testimony before Congress against the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act.

* Henry Ford's first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline and the CAR ITSELF WAS CONTRUCTED FROM HEMP! On his large estate, Ford was
photographed among his hemp fields. The car, 'grown from the soil,' had hemp plastic panels whose impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel;
Popular Mechanics, 1941.

* Hemp called 'Billion Dollar Crop.' It was the first time a cash crop had a business potential to exceed a billion dollars; Popular Mechanics,
Feb., 1938.

Why then did it never get there... legally?

Because of William Randolph Hearst, the media tycoon, who also owned the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division of Kimberly Clark and vast acreage of
timberlands. The Hearst Company supplied most paper products and stood to lose billions because of hemp.

Citizen Kane was Hearst, the actual model for Orson Welles classic movie. He created 'yellow
journalism' and used his news corporation to discredit the innocent herb by publishing horror stories about it, and his influence in Hollywood
resulted in propaganda movies like 'Reefer Madness' (1936), 'Marihuana: Assassin of Youth' (1935) and 'Marihuana: The Devil's Weed' (1936).

Hearst's newspapers ran stories emphasizing the horrors of marijuana. The menace of 'marihuana' made headlines. Readers learned that it was
responsible for everything from car accidents to loose morality.

All done by a weed called "marihuana", a word he didn't exactly coin, but promoted to distort the fact it was nothing but the good ol' hemp, the
wonder-plant promoted by US governments for decades.

In fact the ignorance was so great that when the American Medical Association in 1937 testified to the House Committee in favour of passing the
Prohibitive Marihuana Tax Law they didn't knew it in fact was the medical herb, known for its hundreds application, revered since Hippocrates, they
testified against. The AMA understood cannabis to be a MEDICINE found in numerous healing products sold over the last hundred years. Too late they
learned it was the same herb that had been demonized as MARIJUANA.

Also in 1937, Dupont patented the processes to make plastics from oil and coal. Synthetics such as plastics, cellophane, celluloid, methanol, nylon,
rayon, Dacron, etc. Natural hemp industrialization would have ruined over 80% of Dupont's business.

Congress banned hemp because it was said to be the most violence-causing drug known. Harry J.
Anslinger was appointed head of the Drug Commission and was the drug-czar for 3 decades, persistently promoting the idea that marijuana made
users act extremely violent.

Today, our planet is in desperate trouble. Earth is suffocating as large tracts of rain forests disappear. Pollution, poisons and chemicals are
killing people. These great problems could be reversed if we industrialized hemp. Natural biomass could provide all of the planet's energy needs that
are currently supplied by fossil fuels. We have consumed 80% of our oil and gas reserves. We need a renewable resource. Hemp could be the solution to
soaring gas prices.

Today the propeganda scam is wellknown and regonized as such, beside the medical and enviromental properties being throughly documented.

from the posts on the topic,
i was wondering if this was found in Canada (the Ontario city name)
or Britain (with all the Lorry & the cost differences noted)
or USA

the article said California in one place,
then said Ontario city in another place,

so MapQuest was my next stop, viola',
although i can't see a 'side road' anywheres, i deduce that the
abandoned vehicle carried the 3 tons of weed (from news text)
abandoned from an overheated engine (from news text)

of interest;
there's an airport right there in Ontario city
the driver likely didn't have a cell phone to alleviate the predicament they were caught in.
an abandoned vehicle is given a cusory inspection normally,
it wasn't the smell of Pot that caused the officers to suddenly alter their
patrol duty and intrude the vehicle to discover the stash of bagged/baled Pot.

I have to redeem my one-liner by saying marijuana is less of a gateway drug than alcohol. Alcohol completely shuts down the frontal lobes. It's a
highly addicting drug physically. Chronic alcoholics die in detox more often than coc aine or heroin addicts, the physical withdrawl is so
difficult.
Alcoholism is a genetic disease. Of those with a pre-disposition, many will succumb. Alcohol use in moderation is not a choice for some people, but
it's the legal drug.
I don't advocate drug use, but recreational drug use is part of the human condition. Drug criminalization laws always come about as a means of
preventing an underclass from acquiring wealth. The first drug laws in Canada outlawed the Chinese opium trade that was making the rail slaves richer
than their masters.

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